"Interesting" ideas at meeting with envoy, Netanyahu says (Roundup)

Jan 24, 2010, 15:08 GMT

Jerusalem - A meeting between US Middle East envoy George Mitchell and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, aimed at restarting the peace progress with the Palestinians, saw 'interesting' ideas raised, the Israeli leader said Sunday.

'I heard several interesting ideas to renew the process. We are systematically interested in doing this ... and if the Palestinians will express a similar readiness, we will find ourselves in the midst of a political process, something which is important to us and to them,' Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.

He did not elaborate on the contents of the ideas he heard.

The meeting between the two men was the second in four days, as the former Northern Ireland peace broker continued his long-running attempts to bring the sides back to the negotiating table.

Mitchell, who arrived in the region Wednesday night, failed on Friday to convince Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to drop his demand that Israel freeze all construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem as a condition for returning to the negotiating table.

Netanyahu has however offered a partial freeze of 10 months in the West Bank only, excluding East Jerusalem.

In his talks in Jerusalem Thursday, Mitchell had tried to convince the Israelis to make more gestures toward Abbas, including transferring larger areas in the West Bank which now enjoy partial autonomy to full Palestinian control.

Netanyahu was also asked to remove more military roadblocks in the West Bank, they said. The US hoped that such measures would make it easier for Abbas to return to the negotiating table without losing face, in the absence of a full settlement freeze.

But Mitchell was told Israel had 'exhausted' its basket of gestures to the Palestinians and on Sunday Vice Premier Silvan Shalom said told Israel Radio that there would be no more gestures in order to get the talks going again.

Netanyahu himself made his views plan after the cabinet meeting Sunday, when he said settlement blocks - groupings of settlements close together were part of Israel and would not be given up in any future peace deal with the Palestinians.

The Palestinians demand that Israel uproot all settlements built in the West Bank since 1967, but Netanyahu, planting a tree at a settlement block near Jerusalem, was quoted as saying that he wanted to 'send a clear message that we will stay here. We are planning and we are building.'

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were suspended in late 2008, ahead of Israel's parliamentary elections which brought Netanyahu to power.

The talks have not been renewed since Netanyahu took office at the end of March last year.

Israeli and the Palestinians each blame the other for the stand-off, with each side accusing the other of placing pre-conditions on the resumption of negotiations.